


Episode 4 - My Favorite Colour

by stgjr



Series: "The Power of a Name" Series 1 - "Time Lord Ascendant" [6]
Category: Chrono Cross, Chrono Trigger, Doctor Who, Multi-Fandom
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Multiverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-09
Updated: 2017-03-09
Packaged: 2018-10-01 16:24:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10193873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stgjr/pseuds/stgjr
Summary: Our narrator looks for a fuel source for the TARDIS and instead finds himself getting a chance to meet a fellow time-traveler.  She's one of his favorites too, and not just because her hair is his favorite color (or colour)!





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted on Spacebattles.com on January 10th, 2014.

I love the color purple.

Don't ask me why, I just do.

And I'd just found the best expression of that color I'd ever seen.

The Amethyst Cliffs of Jeli stretched out before us. Their bright purple shimmering was a lovely sight, the kind you make a pilgrimage to see. The coloring of Jeli was very similar as well; the leaves of the plants were purple, purple stone lined the soil... the vista was very purple, with some blues and teals for lovely contrasts.

"It is lovely," Camilla said from where she was standing behind me, her arm wrapped around Janias' waist.

"Yes." I breathed in a sigh. The loveliness of the view was something you couldn't take in all at once while it reminded me of all the other wonders I could find.

"At least it's not too colorful," Janias remarked. "Not like that last world."

I looked at her. "What was wrong with the last world? I thought the colors made it look vibrant."

Camilla shook her head. "They were too colorful, I thought."

"It wasn't that bad. Wasn't a world I was looking to visit but hey, we ended up there, we saw the sights, the locals were _very_ friendly and easy to get along with, what was there to complain about? I like not having to run a lot."

"They were those... four-legged things... what did you call them?"

" _Equus ferus_ ," I declared. "Horses. Well, ponies to be precise. Still, very friendly, didn't you think Janias?"

Janias glared. " _The blue one flew right into me._ "

The mental image crossed my mind and made me laugh. "Well, you know how it is. They're a quadripedal species, we're bipedal, we probably surprised them as much as they surprised us. Although I suppose that one was being pretty reckless, speeding around like that." A thought went through my head. "Wasn't she more of a teal?"

Janias rolled her eyes.

As the sun went down the color effect faded. I put my hands together. "Alright, that show is over. Time to go." We returned to the TARDIS and entered. At the door I turned and faced Janias. "Before I forget, I have a gift for you, my dear."

"Oh?"

I reached into my jacket and pulled out an object that I knew would be very familiar to her.

Janias' eyes widened as she accepted it. "A lightsaber? Where did you get this?"

"I don't sleep as much as you two," I reminded her. "I do all sorts of little errands when you're sleeping. How else do you think the pantry stays stocked?"

"No wonder we have so many of those little colored candies," Camilla laughed.

"Oi, don't diss the M&Ms," I retorted. "It's better than picking up jellybabies."

Janias looked up at me. "Who built this?"

"Oh, I did."

"But... you don't have the Force."

I smiled and shook my head. "I'm a Time Lord, Jan. I don't need the Force to build something like that. I thought about just giving you the parts but... I thought the surprise would be better."

Okay, that was a half lie. The truth was that I wanted to see if I could do it without the Force. It was a bit tricky but, hey, I'm the Doctor. It wasn't _that_ tricky.

Janias accepted it and pointed it out of the TARDIS. When she turned it on an energy blade hissed to life. It was purple, of course. She looked at me and rolled her eyes again. "I told you this is a Sith color."

"Not in the post-Ruusan era," I responded. "And not in the past either. The joy of time travel, my dear."

She turned the blade off and put it on her belt. Her green eyes looked up at me. "Thank you, Doctor."

"Yes, well, I imagine if we find any more zombies it'll be useful, yes?" I winked at her and went up to the controls. I manipulated a few buttons and checked the displays. "Oh, it looks like our girl needs a fill up."

"A what?"

"A refueling, my dear Cami," I answered. "Your starships use hypermatter. The TARDIS uses energies absorbed from proximity to disturbances in space-time. Rifts and such. Dormant ones are preferable, of course." I ran a few calculations. "Ah, here we are. I think we have a good one here. Tally ho!"

I moved the TARDIS across six dimensions and settled into a rich field of energy, associated with a long-passed temporal event. It was a pretty big one from what I saw. I went up to the TARDIS door and opened it.

A checkerboard floor was at my feet. The facility around me was empty but cleared rather past 20th Century level with active computer displays. I stepped out with the girls behind me. Ahead of us was a single statue, a feminine humanoid form with arms raised up high as if in triumph. I walked up to it and read the plaque.

" _Chronopolis Military Research Station_." I looked up and sighed. "Oh _bugger_."

The Chronoverse. I'd be overjoyed, except this was from the crappy sequel and this facility part of a very convoluted plot that, nevertheless, would save space-time in this cosmos and maybe others. "I wonder," I murmured. Knowing how much time travel happened on this world, not to mention an alternate timeline bridging to another, I wondered if I might find something here concerning the Cracks. For all I knew the time travel that a certain adventuring teenager and his friends used to stop a space parasite from destroying their world was the result of a Crack, or even more than one.

I decided it was worth checking out.

"Doctor?"

"What?", I asked, looking back to Janias and Camilla. They pointed above me, toward the tube elevator.

A massive blue robot was hovering into sight, clear weapon mounts shifting into readiness.

"Oh _bugger_ ," I said yet again.

 

 

Having a big robot trying to kill me was a change from zombies, at least.

Of course, zombies didn't have that much firepower.

We dove for cover as a rocket slammed into the floor. I pulled out my sonic screwdriver while Janias ignited her new lightsaber. "I'll draw its attention!", she called out. "You get close and do... whatever it is you're ging to do!"

"Good plan," i replied.

Janias may have only been a Padawan in training, but her hard experiences made her a very effective ally in a fight like this. She jumped and rolled and dodged the firecoming her way, knocking some shots back into the thing with her lightsaber. I drew closer to it all the while.

The rocket launcher came up again and fired. This time Janias extended her arm. Subtle energy thrummed in the air and the projectile was thrown back into the robot, exploding in the process. I looked to see she was staggering a little; she wasn't so well-trained in the Force to be able to do this kind of thing effortlessly.

But she did give me an opening.

I made one final sprint. As the damaged robot pushed itself back up to height I got close enough to bring the sonic screwdriver up and activate one of its more enjoyable functions; a software scrambler. The robot froze in place, unable to process attack commands. That let me get close enough to pull open an access port on the chest and run the screwdriver over it again. "Ah, command functions... and friend-or-foe identifiers. Well, we'll have to change that. Oooooh..." I smiled while purple light from my sonic played over the port. "A network connection to all the other bots in the station, hrm? That is very useful, thank you very much. Just let me export these friend-or-foe settings and a nice remote command and.... done."

When the robot began moving again, it simply stepped back and lifted into the air to hover again. Janias looked up from where she was recovering. "Nothing's ever easy with you, is it Doctor?"

"Well, it's not as bad as getting run into by a pony-pegasus flying about fifty kilometers an hour, is it?" I palmed my screwdriver. "I'm going to check a couple of things, you girls stay in the TARDIS."

"Just be careful," Camilla urged.

I nodded and continued on to the elevator. It didn't want to let me go down to the basement without a security key but, well, I had a sonic screwdriver, which is even better. Well, unless someone has a deadlock on something. But that wasn't apparently a part of the technological scale here. After the elevator came and brought me down to the basement I was treated to the sight of a large chamber with a single golden nameplate above it. _Project KID_ was engraved into the nameplate. "Well, let's see what timeframe we're at," I muttered, stepping up to it. When I tried to gain access it refused, demanding an "Arbiter".

Well, that settled that. "Sometime between 1006 and 1020 Guardia Calendar," I mumbled to myself. Undaunted I used the screwdriver to continue playing around. The system was very well networked and I was able to go through all sorts of data. I even was able to download into my screwdriver's reserve memory a very important piece of software I wanted to preserve.

Now you're asking, by this point, just what this place is. The truth is... _extremely_ convoluted. The short version is; a wise man from an ancient, magi-tech using civilization was thrown into the future by about fourteen hundred years and discovered that the princess he once served loyally was being forcibly merged with a nasty planet-wrecking space parasite that had fallen into a dimensional pocket with her (after being defeated by a bunch of meddling kids and their frog). This resulting merged entity would devour space-time when it finished maturing. To stop it, he arranged the creation of Chronopolis and intentionally guided it along a path that would ensure it attracted the attention of the aforementioned parasite before its defeat so that said parasite would drag it back in time to interfere with history and prevent said defeat. That gambit failed, the spirit of the planet summoned an alternate world's reptilian civilization.... oh, forget it. See what I mean? _Convoluted_.

Pretty MacGuffin inside Chronopolis merges with dying little boy, activating a control system to lock down the MacGuffin, Chronopolis computer gets upset at having its MacGuffin toy locked out, turns boy's father into a meat puppet over time, tries to kill boy to undo damage. Quantum decision point results, computer gets locked into timeline where boy dies and system is still locked while boy lives in newly-formed fifth dimensional.... this isn't working, is it?

No, no it isn't. I bloody well give up.

_A Wizard Did It_. And all space-time was saved.

There. I'm through trying to explain this situation.

Amateur "Prophets" of Time and their convoluted schemes. They should leave saving space-time to the professionals. Ignore the fact that I'm still a rookie Time Lord and will be for a while.

I was about to cut the connection when I noticed internal sensors detecting an energy spike in the holding areas. The field wasn't entirely technological, but was clearly a spatial bridge of some sort. In other words, a transporter.

Three signals appeared. Only one was Human.

And the biggest smile crossed my face. I _knew_ when I was. I knew who the Human was. "Oh, my dear, dear TARDIS, thank you," I whispered. "The perfect time!"

I felt giddy as I returned to the elevator.

 

 

The holding area was a converted brig, given this _was_ a military research facility in its timeframe. No, it's not one you can find in the game. Did you really think those representations do justice to the truth of these facilities? Nope.

I had been hoping to find the Human all alone, but the others were still there with their captive on the other end of a forcefield. "...how to release the circuit if you wish to live," a voice hissed. I mean literally hissed since it was being spoken by, well, a cat-man.

Yes, a cat man.

Well, to be precise, a Human long transformed with feline biological material by a power-mad supercomputer, but that's getting into a bit too much detail honestly.

"Oi, no need for that now," I called out.

Three faces turned to me. I kept a smile on my face as my hand reached for the sonic screwdriver in my pocket. "Hello there. _Monsieur_ Lynx and _Mademoiselle_ Harle, I presume? I'm the Doctor. _J'e m'appelle Docteur_ , if you prefer."

"How did you get in here?" Lynx crossed his arms and tried to look intimidating. I did have to be careful with that one; being the embodiment of a living supercomputer in a world with active metaphysical energy meant he had some nasty means of aggression if I pushed him. I decided to keep him off balance by, well, being the giddy fanboy I felt welling inside me over the third figure.

"Oh, just stopping by," I answered. I walked up toward him. "Before you start to get violent, I think you should be aware of something."

Lynx was capable of a feline smirk. Undoubtedly he thought me more of a madman than anything else. It was probably the reason he hadn't unslung the wicked-looking scythe strapped to his back. "Go ahead. Amuse me."

I brought my sonic up and aimed it at one of the big combat robots in the room. I didn't mention them before because I was only mentioning threats, you see. They didn't count as one. At the push of my sonic they came active and activated their weapons. Said weapons were quickly pointed at Lynx and Harle.

Oh, and, did I mention the combat droids that had followed me and were now covering them from the exit as well? Consider that done.

"As you can see, _Monsieur_ Lynx, I'm quite handy with identification protocols in security systems. Comes with being a Time Lord." I winked. "Now, what have we here?" I pointed the sonic to the controls for the cell forcebeams. The red beams vanished a moment later. I looked into the cell as a pair of light green eyes looked back up at me. "Oh-hohoho..." I knew my smile was almost maniac from giddyness. "I've been looking forward to this!"

I should probably describe the captive I'd just rescued. She wasn't in the best of shapes at the moment. Her exposed skin was red from exposure to heat (or rather flames in this case) and her clothes had some burn marks on them. She was holding one arm awkwardly from a clear injury to the limb. Her clothing was casual but matched the colors I knew to be her preference; orange and green.

And, of course, her hair was my favorite color.

"We should do this properly, one time traveler to another," I said as she blinked at me through her spectacles. "Hello, Lucca. I'm the Doctor. And I'm a _big fan_ of your work."

 

 

 

In retrospect, I probably should have simply taken Lucca straight to the TARDIS and then had my geek-out. Instead I prompted to have it right there, right in front of the snarling, hissing cat-man who was probably envisioning slicing me to ribbons with a scythe.

Lucca was admittedly confused. Of course, she'd just been dragged from her burning home to a future facility by a cat-man and his harlequin assistant and now had a tall guy in a blue-themed suit smiling like a maniac at her. I can't really blame her, can I?

"Has anyone ever told you how great your hair looks? That color... purple's my favorite, you know. See?" I showed her the tip of the sonic screwdriver. "Purple! And the brainy specs!", I shouted with glee. "I love those brainy specs! I just got my own, see?" I pulled a pair of specially-made glasses out of my shirt pocket and slipped them on. They were square-shaped instead of the round-shaped glasses Lucca was wearing. "What do you think, Lucca? Be honest, I can take the criticism."

She shook her head, still very befuddled. "Just who are you?"

"I'm a Time Lord. Well, Human-turned-Time Lord, I suppose..."

"...and soon to be very dead," Lynx added.

"Oi, who's talking to you?" I stood up and looked at Lynx, putting my brainy specs away as I did. "I'll get to you in a moment, Mister Whiskers."

"You shouldn't be here," Lucca said. "He's too powerful."

"Yeah, he is rather loaded for bear, isn't he?" I knelt on my haunches again in front of her. "Oh, you have no idea how excited I am at this meeting, Lucca. Or would you prefer Doctor Ashtear? I'm fine with formality, if you'd prefer."

"Uh... no, that won't be necessary."

"Oh, my apologies. You've been through a lot due to this hairball-hacking bloke, I really should be more thoughtful. It's just... I'm just so excited to meet you." Hearing Lynx hiss again I winked at her and moved my head up by her's. "Can you run?", I whispered into her ear.

Lucca nodded slightly. That was good, her injuries weren't in her legs, at least.

"Be ready." After whispering that back to her I stood back to my height and faced down Lynx. "And as for _you_." I pointed a finger at him. "Seriously, just what are you trying to accomplish here? You really think she can unlock the Frozen Flame for you? I mean, I suppose you have little choice given you made the boneheaded decision to kill the boy it bonded to. But this is just a stretch."

I saw more than just irritation flash in Lynx's yellow eyes. "How do you know somuch?", he hissed.

"I'm a Time Lord, it comes with the territory," I answered. "If I thought for a moment I was talking to the original owner of this body I would tell him how sorry I was for him. He did everything he could to save the son he loved. But he's not here, is he? _You destroyed him_. All that's left is a monstrosity, an extension of a power-mad supercomputer unwilling to accept the loss of its precious toy. And now you've ruined the lives of quite a few nice little children and for what? A shot in the dark?"

My voice had been raising. I could feel intense outrage welling up inside me as I faced down Lynx, a monster who was still to go on to engineer yet more pain and suffering. I thought of the cries of children as their home burned down around them.

"You mess with power you cannot imagine, simpleton," Lynx threatened.

"Oh, how I love the hubris of rogue AIs," I responded. And as I did so, I realized Lynx was playing a deeper game.

He was, after all, the extension of the FATE supercomputer, not always in contact with it but still connected in some way. This was the same computer that ultimately ran Chronopolis even with the lockouts on it.

In other words, the computer that was even now undoing my alterations to the security bot programming.

"Fun fact," I said, bringing my sonic screwdriver back out. "Like canines, felines have a wider perception range of audio frequencies than Humans."

Lynx looked at me with some bewilderment.

I smiled and brought the sonic screwdriver up before triggering it.

A yowling screech erupted from Lynx's throat. Harle also dropped. The high-frequency sonic pulse I'd just directed at them was clearly within her listening range as well, which wasn't surprising given her origins. I reached down toward Lucca who was already standing. She took my hand. I smiled and looked back to her. "And now, in respect for our fair harlequin here... _Allons-y_!"

We ran out of the holding area. As we stepped out I saw the drones shut down. The security network was rebooting, meaning I was about to get set upon by the entire base worth of drones. And a very angry super-powered cat-man.

"Where are we going?!", Lucca asked.

"Our way out of here," I answered. We began racing up stairs.

As we came out the next door we had to flatten against the wall as fire came down from a hovering aerial drone. I brought up the sonic screwdriver and used a lull in the firing to send off a disruption pulse. The drone sparked a little and gave us an opening to keep running.

We came out along a side route to the central courtyard and made our way to the central platform. The TARDIS was there, the door open and waiting for us. I didn't look back to see if Lucca yet realized what she was seeing inside the TARDIS.

She didn't get much of a chance. Our robot friend from earlier slammed down in front of the TARDIS. We had to dive for cover as a rocket exploded behind us. "Bloody robots," I protested. I could hear more coming from behind us.

Lucca looked up from the cover we'd taken and stretched her palm out. A fireball raced across the distance and struck the armor just below the rocket launcher. "Still have your fire, eh?"

"It's been years, that's about all I can do now," she answered. "Do you have some kind of gun or something?"

"Not usually one for guns," I admitted. "But I don't think we'll be needing it."

The familiar "snap-hiss" of a lightsaber igniting came from behind the drone. A purple energy blade erupted from its torso, slicing upward and bisecting its head. Sparks erupted from severed circuits and the thing fell over. Janias was standing behind it. "Come on, Doctor!"

"Right, here we go!" I led Lucca up to the entrance of the TARDIS. As soon as we got in weapons fire from approaching aerial drones raked our path. Janias deflected the blasts with her lightsaber and got in. With her open palm she made a hand gesture, closing the door with the Force.

I only barely noticed this because I had already gone straight to my control console. "Looks like we fueled up a bit. And I can think of another location near here that we can use to finish." I grabbed the TARDIS controls and shifted us into the Time Vortex.

Once we were safe I looked to see where Lucca was standing, hand on the railing, gazing over the TARDIS control room. "It's a pocket dimension!", she shouted, astounded. "This is great!"

"Dimensionally transcedental technology is rather wonderful."

"What did you call this again?", Lucca asked.

"This is my TARDIS. TARDIS means..."

"..."Time And Relative Dimensions in Space'?", Lucca finished for me.

Cami and Janias exchanged surprised glances. I let out a laugh of glee. "Of course you'd figure that out, wouldn't you?"

"So this is a time machine?"

"Yes. Actually, not just time but six dimensions of space-time," I clarified. "New model. Long story for how I got it."

"So you can take me back to the oprhanage?", Lucca asked.

I stopped for a moment and lowered my head. I knew she was going to ask this but I'd been hoping to talk to her fast.

"Can't you?", she repeated.

"I'm sorry, Lucca." I turned and looked at her. "Lucca, if I take you back there now, it will alter the timeline. And not for the better. You need to be gone for the next few years. It'll not only keep Lynx from snatching you again, but make sure that Balthasar's hideously-complicated plan to save Princess Schala and your cosmos' space-time continuum actually works. That dodder's plan needs all the help it can get, frankly."

She shook her head. "But my kids! They're trapped."

"Thankfully not," I said. "A time traveler from the near future will enter the orphanage and save the children."

"But Kid..."

"Has some tough times ahead, yes. But she'll be the stronger for it," I replied. "Becomes quite the fighter. She'll play a key role in finishing Balthasar's plan. A nice, clean slate to all of the trouble in El Nido."

"You can't just ask me to not do anything!", Lucca shouted.

"I'm not," I answered. "I'm taking you to 1021AD, we need to finish fueling up the TARDIS and I think Opassa Beach should still have enough residual energy from the dimensional rift to do the job. Then you can decide what you want to do." Seeing the anger in her eyes I stepped up to her. "I don't ask this lightly of you, Lucca. I wish we could do otherwise. I know you and your friends made a lot of changes to your timeline and you're probably wondering if you can do it again. But the stakes are too high on this one."

"And what about Crono and Nadia?"

I lowered my eyes. "I don't know. I don't know everything about your timeline. When I find out, well, we can see what can be..."

There was a knock at the TARDIS door.

We both turned to face the door. "Some fisher from Arni," I guessed. I brought my hand up and snapped my fingers to open the door. When it swung open and I saw who was standing there I felt my jaw drop. "Okaaaay."

"Crono! Nadia!" Lucca went up to her friends and embraced them.

"Hello again, Doctor," Nadia - otherwise known as Marle - said to me after Lucca let go.

I stared at her. "I don't believe... _oh_." I had to smile. "Different timestreams."

Looking at them, Crono and Marle - I shall call her Marle from this point because dammit that's her name to me - were about a decade younger-looking than Lucca. "Well, that narrows down what happened," I murmured. "Something with Porre. I'm imagining that it was, say, the fall of Guardia Castle, not every set of remains able to be identified, et cetera."

"Something like that," Lucca said. I thought I saw tears in her eyes as she embraced her friends again.

"Well." I smiled. "This is a pleasant outcome to a fuel stop."

 

 

 

We remained at Opassa for a while. My offer of a place in the TARDIS or a trip elsewhere was turned down. It was clear why; El Nido was a safe place from Porre for the moment and General Viper was no friend of that regime. This was the perfect place for a restoration of Guardia to be founded. Even if people wondered why they hadn't aged, well... they _were_ known time travelers, weren't they?

We didn't overhear everything this world-saving trio said. As for other conversation material, I won't bore you with the small talk. I did have a sufficient geekout at meeting them all. unsurprisingly, Crono wasn't a particularly talkative fellow. It would have been amusing if he had been like Morn on DS9; a reputation as a talker even if we... outside observers never saw it.

Night came and they were preparing to return to Arni and the lodgings they had there. Lucca walked back to the TARDIS as I stood, leaning in the doorway. "You know, the advantage of time travel in my TARDIS is that I can be fairly precise when she cooperates," I remarked. "I can imagine a bright woman like you would enjoy some of the sights. I was just at the Amethyst Cliffs of Jeli, very lovely."

Lucca smiled at that. "Thank you for the offer, Doctor. But we've got things to do here."

"The offer is always open."

"What happened to the people who took me?", she asked.

"Oh, defeated. Chronopolis probably still stands but FATE is gone so it's just a ruin now, all of the drones failing and the power going down..."

"This has something to do with Schala, you said?"

"Yes. Very convoluted, mind you, but the entire thing was about getting her out of Lavos' grip." I gave a half-smile. "I suspect you already knew something of it."

"I knew Kid was connected to her," Lucca admitted. "I want to find her. She's still my little Sis."

"Just tell her to watch the accent, it can grate after a while," I answered. Granted, that assumed Schala and Kid hadn't somehow merged into one being. I rather hoped not; Kid was clearly her own being. "Funny how much work FATE put into controlling things here. They based her off the Mother Brain system, you know."

Lucca shook her head. "That wasn't smart."

"Or it was just Balthasar playing his long game. Remind me to find him and give him a stern talking to." I chuckled softly. "Funny thing about those AIs. They decide they know better than Humans and whenever they make that decision, well, they end up with big egos about it even as they emulate the very worse aspects of Human nature."

"I remember the Geno Dome in the Lavos timeline," Lucca said. "It was terrible to see the Mother Brain AI fall so far."

"Of course, that lack of other virtues always seems to doom them."

"Egotism isn't a survival trait," Lucca agreed. "They stop being logical and lose all of the advantages a machine mind normally has."

"Very true. Oh." I reached into my pocket and pulled out a circuit board to hand to her. "Copied that over from the systems in Chronopolis. It's the Prometheus Circuit that drove Lynx to abduct you. I think that if you were to install it as the guiding intelligence of a robot then, well, you'll be able to say hello to another old friend of your's."

Lucca looked over the board. "You don't mean... it's Robo?"

"He was meant to be the last check on FATE. Unfortunately the Prometheus Circuit was destroyed by Lynx and FATE during the entire Chrono Cross affair. But I couldn't leave Robo to face deletion like that, could I?" I smiled. "Be sure to extend to him my greetings."

I was treated to a hug in thanks.

The story ends here for now. I'd be back of course. That was rather clear. But it's a story for another day, when I had already become a different man.

However, after we had left and were taking a rest in the TARDIS, there is one conversation to repeat. I had taken to the pantry to find a meal and found Camilla sitting. "You really enjoyed seeing them," Camilla observed.

"Oh yes. I admit it was an ambition of mine once we got out here," I said.

"Something from your old life?"

"Yes." I smiled and looked down at the cup of tea before sipping from it. "I had a friend who would have loved to have been here, she admired Lucca more than I did."

"Really?" Camilla smiled at me. "What was she like? This friend?"

"Oh. She was funny, a good storyteller, loved birds, she..."

I stopped talking. Camilla looked at me with interest turning to concern as my hand went up to my temple. In my mind I was trying to grasp the memory of the friend I was talking about. Her name, her face...

But I couldn't. It slipped from my grasp. As I tried to grasp harder sharp pain filled my head.

"No," I whimpered. "No no no, don't do this to me. I want to remember you. _I want to remember you._ "

"Doctor?!" Camilla stood up and came over to me as quickly as she could. "Doctor, are you okay?"

"I can't remember," I said, my voice hoarse. "I can't remember her. Why can't I remember...?!"

I spent the night frustrated at my failing memory. And I was horrified as well. The lock in my mind, the "box" that my old memories and self were being pulled into, was growing stronger.

And when it was all gone... what would I be then? What would I become?

I had no answers. The lack of those answers kept me up many a night in those early days. And when they stopped doing so... things only got worse.

It was a terrible irony. I had brought back together a trio of close friends who had saved their world just as I was losing what little I had left of my own old friends.

Maybe if I'd stopped calling myself the Doctor the process would have slowed down. But I couldn't bring myself to. Foolishly I continued to want to be like the Doctor. I wanted to do the good that came with that name without realizing the risk that came with it.

I still had hope of something of myself remaining though. Yes, there was still hope. Because even as memories faded, some things remained.

Purple was still my favorite color, for one.

  



End file.
